Henriques reflects on Sri Lanka tour

Allrounder says he wasn't expecting to play and would make a few changes ahead of his next visit to the subcontinent

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Moises Henriques says would have prepared differently for the Qantas Tour of Sri Lanka if he had his time over again.

Henriques was a surprise selection in the 15-man Test squad for the Qantas Tour of Sri Lanka having played only four first-class matches in the preceding summer due to injury.

It comes as no surprise that the 29-year-old says he was nervous ahead of his first Test in three years when he was included for the third Test XI in Colombo.

Henriques batted at No.5 at the SSC Ground, replacing Usman Khawaja in the top order, but was unable to make an impact with the bat, scoring 4 in each innings in the 163-run loss.

Reflecting on his Test recall, the right-hander says he would have changed his preparation in the lead up to the match.

"Whenever you get the opportunity to play cricket for Australia you want to do as well as you can and if I had my time again I’d prepare a little bit differently," Henriques told cricket.com.au.

"I’d certainly practice my sweeping a lot further out.

"I feel a lot of the successful batsmen over there did a lot of sweeping and even come the one-day tour, our guys that did well like ‘Wadey’ (wicketkeeper-batsman Matthew Wade) and George (Bailey) did a lot of sweeping as well.

"It’s definitely a shot I worked on over there but by the time I felt like I got it right, it was almost too late.

"It’s certainly something I’d change if I had another tour there.

"There’s nothing I can do about it now but learn from the experience and hopefully it will put me in better stead for this season."

Super-sub Henriques takes 'an absolute ripper'

While he jumped at the chance to return to the Test XI, Henriques says he wasn’t expecting to play during the series, let alone alongside fellow allrounder Mitch Marsh as a specialist batsman.

"I kept those options (playing as a batsman) open as long as I was batting well enough either in the practice games or at training. You never want to rule it out," Henriques said.

"You don’t really think about it because you don’t think that your fellow teammates are going to not do well.

" … I wasn’t really expecting it because I thought our boys would go over there and play well.

"There were obviously a few decisions made after the second Test.

"If you asked me at the start of the series if I was expecting to bat five and play in the same team as Mitch (Marsh), I probably wouldn’t have been expecting it.

"I’ll take it and learn from it and hopefully be better from the opportunity."

Uncut: Marsh discusses Sri Lanka ODI squad

Henriques was stumped three times on tour – once in each format – but can see the lighter side when trying to find a solution for his wandering back foot.

"I’ll probably try to get some super-glue on my back toe that just kept slipping over the white line every time, even when I wasn’t trying to advance down the wicket," Henriques said with a wry smile.

"That was quite disappointing to get out three times the same way and not learn on the run and not even realising you’re making the same mistake.

"That was pretty frustrating, but again that’s something you have to prepare for now, that once you’ve made the mistake a couple of times you’re quite prone to it."